It is known to use life safety devices within a building or other structure to detect various hazardous conditions and provide a warning to occupants of the building of the detected hazardous condition. Examples of well-known life safety devices include smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. Many life safety devices include both the capability to detect a hazardous condition, for example smoke, and to generate an audible and/or visual alarm to provide an alert that a hazardous condition has been detected. Other life safety devices are configured to detect a hazardous condition, and when a hazardous condition is detected, send a signal to a remote alarm device that generates the alarm. In each case, a hazardous condition is detected and an alarm is generated warning of the hazardous condition.
In typical systems, the life safety devices can be interconnected to one another using one or more wires. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,453 to Andres et al., the entirety of which is hereby incorporated by reference. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,453, a system includes a plurality of devices connected to one another by wires used to provide power and facilitate communication between each device. With a system configured in this manner, if a hazardous condition is detected by one device located in one part of a building, the device can communicate the hazardous condition through the wires to devices located in other parts of the building to cause those devices to generate a warning to alert occupants of the hazardous condition.
While systems such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,453 are advantageous in that the systems can alert occupants throughout a building of a hazardous condition, the systems can be disadvantageous in that they require wires to be run between each device in the systems to allow for communications between devices. Such systems can be economically installed in new construction, but it can be costly and time-consuming to install the wiring required for these systems in existing construction.
Attempts to remedy this problem include systems with devices that communicate with one another via wireless technologies such as radio frequency (RF) signals, in which the device that detects a hazardous condition sends an RF signal to other devices in the building, thereby triggering a warning on those devices. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,587,705; and 5,898,369. The use of RF interconnected life safety devices can be attractive, as an existing building, for example a home, can be equipped with the safety devices without the need to run new wiring throughout the building.
However, when a device needs to be added in a building having an existing system of wired life safety devices: (i) the new device must be wired to the existing system of wired detectors to allow the new device to communicate with the existing system; or (ii) the entire system of wired devices must be replaced with wireless devices to allow for wireless communication between the devices.
It is therefore desirable to provide systems that allow for a hybrid of wired and wireless interconnections between devices of the systems.